How to Win Elections in the Eastern Delta of Egypt: Towards the Idea of a Strategic Tribalism

Abstract

In order to examine the entangled notions of rural hinterlands and practices of future- and place-making, this article focuses on an episode from my fieldwork in Egypt’s Eastern Nile Delta in 2015/16, when I accompanied Tahawi Bedouins on their successful campaign during Egypt’s parliamentary elections in 2015. The aim is to shed light on the strategic use of tribal solidarity and patronage networks to mobilize supporters and voters. However, the same tribal networks and resources were also used to invoke and perform the necessary tribal unity when faced with a rural non-Tahawi population. The article develops two ideas, strategic tribalism and maḍyafa (guest house) ecology, to show the election campaign as an example of future- and place-making in a rural setting, whereas the specific constraints, possibilities and meanings embedded in the rural as a resource and a reserve unfold very differently, always reaching beyond romantic notions of the rural as remote.